"Food First" Puts Ideology First

One of my daily reads is BBSpot,
because its proprietor has a "Daily Links" feature that often points
to the offbeat and interesting.
The other day, though, it linked to a page
titled "12 Myths About
Hunger" from an organization called "Food First." Which, in turn, irritated
me enough to generate this blog entry.

A number of the FF "myths" are OK, some even good. But
there's a huge festering sore down at Myth 7:

Myth 7:

The Free Market Can End Hunger

Reality: Unfortunately, such a "market-is-good, government-is-bad"
formula can never help address the causes of hunger. Such a dogmatic
stance misleads us that a society can opt for one or the other, when in
fact every economy on earth combines the market and government in
allocating resources and distributing goods.

In just a couple sentences, FF demonstrates
its own dogmatism, an unwillingness to even consider the merits of
the "myth"
it's pretending to discuss.

Let's grant FF's blindingly
obvious insight that
there are no pure examples of either
a 100%-market or 100%-statist economy. So? We can't compare the
track records of relatively
free-market countries versus
unfree countries?

Answer: sure we can. And the results are pretty obvious
and unambiguous. We'll look at them below, but let's continue
with Food First, first:

The market's marvelous
efficiencies can only work to eliminate hunger, however, when purchasing
power is widely dispersed.

So all those who believe in the usefulness of the market and the
necessity of ending hunger must concentrate on promoting not the market,
but the consumers!

In all of the myth-analysis, this is only one of two exclamations;
FF must find this to be an especially powerful point.
And, in the trivial sense that it's better for consumers to have
money than to not have money, it's correct. But it turns out that
FF only sees one way this can happen, through the visible fist
of a Robin-Hood state:

In this task, government has a vital role to play in
countering the tendency toward economic concentration, through genuine
tax, credit, and land reforms to disperse buying power toward the poor.
Recent trends toward privatization and de-regulation are most definitely
not the answer.

In short, FF puts its blind faith in government to somehow
determine the "right" amount of expropriation (which they euphemize as
"land reform" and efforts to
"disperse buying power".) Needless to say, they are
silent on any example of this actually working anywhere.

A good antidote to FF's socialist hand-waving is found
in the report Economic
Freedom of the World report from the Fraser Institute.
They crunch an impressive amount of actual data, and their
conclusions are convincing. Here's an incomplete list:

Countries with more economic freedom have substantially higher
per-capita incomes.

Countries with more economic freedom have higher growth rates.

Countries with more economic freedom have higher levels of
investment per capita.

Countries with more economic freedom have lower levels of unemployment.

Life expectancy is over 25 years longer in countries with the
most economic freedom than it is in those with the least.

The amount, as opposed to the share, of income going to the poorest
10% of the population is much greater in nations with the most economic
freedom than it is in those with the least.

Infant mortality is much lower in countries with high levels of
economic freedom.

Adult mortality is much lower in countries with high levels of
economic freedom.

The incidence of child labor declines as economic freedom increases.

Access to improved water increases with economic freedom..

More economic freedom is related to greater "human development"
as measured by the United Nations.

More economic freedom is related to less "human poverty" as measured
by the United Nations.

With fewer regulations, taxes, and tariffs, economic freedom
reduces the opportunities for corruption on the part of public
officials.

Bottom line: if you really care about getting large masses
of people out of poverty and misery, history
demonstrates the single most
effective tool is a healthy dose of economic liberty.

It is hard to believe that groups like FF are totally
unaware of that.
So why are thy so down on the free market?
I think a clue is in their mission statement:

The purpose of the Institute for Food and Development Policy - Food
First - is to eliminate the injustices that cause hunger.

Ah. FF's
true battle is against (ideologically-defined)
"injustice". Poverty and misery—not so much.

UNH's Very Own Conspiracy Theorist Speaks Out

UNH professor William Woodward recently penned a
incoherent and rambling op-ed
in our local paper, Foster's Daily Democrat. (Free registration
may be required.) Entitled "U.S. urged to suspend support for Israel,"
it is a one-sided screed that blames Israel for, well, everything.
Hamas/Hezbollah terror is airbrushed as "understandable in this
context." It's an unfocused paste-together
of recycled and tired anti-Israel propaganda and slogans.

What really stood out for me, though, was the tagline:

William R. Woodward is a Quaker, a professor of psychology at the
University of New Hampshire and a member of Seacoast Peace Response and
N.H. Peace Action.

Foster's didn't see fit to mention that Professor
Woodward is also a member
of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth", a lunatic conspiracy group that holds
(among other things) that
the World Trade Center was brought down by "controlled demolitions"
and that 9/11 "may have been orchestrated by elements within the
administration to manipulate Americans."

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